Post by Lisa Cuddy on Jan 17, 2010 15:50:18 GMT -5
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Dr. Eric Foreman, a neurologist, was a member of Dr. Gregory House's handpicked team of specialists at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital's Diagnostic Medicine Department. He was hired by House three days prior to the series' pilot episode (as revealed in a deleted scene of the pilot).
Foreman attended Columbia University as an undergraduate before matriculating to Johns Hopkins Medical School. Little is known about Foreman's past, although it has been suggested that his family was not very well-off and his parents are currently living on a pension. Foreman was also a former juvenile delinquent who once burglarized houses and stole cars; this is said to have played a major factor in House's decision to hire him in the first place.
Like House, Foreman has also been shown to be extremely honest even at the cost of hurting other people's feelings. Although House frequently targets Foreman with racist jokes, Foreman does not appear to take them personally. It seems that House does so simply because Foreman's race is an easy target --- just as House often targets Chase due to his nationality and, with Cameron, her gender.
Foremans father, Rodney, is deeply religious, while his mother is unfit to travel due to a medical condition which is somehow tied to her memory or perception skills, such as Alzheimer's.
In the episode Euphoria, Part 1, Foreman became infected with a mysterious illness. Another patient, infected with the same condition, experiences a very painful death before his eyes. In the conclusion of the episode, Cameron, acting as Foreman's medical proxy, performs a white-matter brain biopsy and the condition is revealed to be amoebic meningoencephalitis caused by naegleria, a water-borne parasite that, upon being inhaled, attacks the brain.
After treatment, it appears Foreman is cured of the meningoencephalitis, but something may have gone wrong during the biopsy. Although his brain had some confusion between the left and right side of the brain, he is in recovery. Upon his return from recovery, Foreman's memory seemed to have become impaired, as he struggled to remember key medical concepts, and could not remember how to make coffee. In the next two episodes, however, he seems to be able to once again keep up with his fellow doctors when coming up with medical theories.
When Michael Tritter offers Foreman an opportunity to win early parole for his drug-addicted, incarcerated brother, Foreman turns it down. Tritter sees this as hypocrisy, citing Foreman's own criminal record, and says that while Foreman tries being compassionate to ward off House's training, he is actually just as cold and methodical as his employer. This opinion is given credence when Foreman gives his girlfriend a chance to go to nurse practitioner school -- as a way to end the relationship; she states that both he and House can't stand to let people get close to them.
Foreman eventually gave his two weeks' notice to quit, as he was scared that he was turning apathetic towards patients' well being or, as he admitted in the Season 3 finale, he doesn't want to turn into House. House angrily countered that he was like him, and in many ways was more selfish by caring about how good he looked in the eyes of patients and by dragging out his resignation until House admitted he wanted him to stay.
Foreman left without a word following this tirade. In the episode The Right Stuff, Cuddy reveals that Foreman took a job at New York Mercy running the diagnostics department. In the following episode he was indeed seen in charge of his own diagnostic team, but is fired at the end of the same episode. The NYM Hospital's dean stated that he confused saving lives with doing the right thing.
